Recuperated Companies

Workers of the occupied self-managed factories of Viome, in Thessaloniki, and Roben, in Veria, along with supporters from all over Greece, have started their "Caravan of Struggle and Solidarity" to Athens on the afternoon of Thursday 31 June, to protest the inactivity of the government and its unwillingness to legalise the operation of the two recuperated companies. read more »

In June 2015 workers at Dita detergent factory in Tusla, following bankrupcy, look over the factory to stop it becoming derelict. Following repairs, particularly to the roof and steamline, they have gone back into production as a workers' cooperative. The following is a short piece from the Sarajavo Times. Hope to have a fuller story soon.

"After months of hard work and effort in the Tuzla detergent factory Dita, the production of powder detergent Arix Tenzo started yesterday. read more »

The destruction of the welfare state in Europe and the continuation of the state of social ills in the rest of the world are the consequences of an irrational society. In Spain, Portugal and Greece 40% of young people are unemployed and the state has unpayable debts. After riots in England’s capital city the Government insisted on calling the youth “vandals without a cause”, dismissing out of hand the obvious social causes of the revolt. read more »

This session explored four institutions of human economy – alternative currencies, cooperativism, urban welfare and commons – and reflected on how these forms can become permanent and sustainable alternatives. read more »

The ensuing excursus in the history of farmers’ cooperativism and workers’ participation brings into visibility a variety of partly non-capitalist processes of collective self-activity in Greece. These have operated alongside and intertwined with a state-dominated market economy involving a multitude of small business, an under-industrialised production and a large service sector (commerce, tourism, finance, etc.). Taking our cues from the constructive critique of ‘capitalo-centrism’ put forward by Gibson-Graham, we adumbrate here the historical contours of a heterogeneous economy which is not fully captured by any single logic, global force or sovereign structure. read more »

Below is an account by Jorge Martin, the International Secretary of Hands Off Venezuela, on his visit in November 2008 to an occupied factory in Indonesia. The visit to this occupied factory was part of a Hands Off Venezuela tour to Malaysia and Indonesia.read more »

Workers’ self-management and related forms of workers’ control over production is associated with periods of societal transformation. In its most advanced form it presents a challenge to capitalist property relations as part of a revolutionary process. Workers’ Councils, as a form of self-management, have occurred under capitalism but also in Communist command economy states. The relationship between the practice of self-management and the class nature of the state is not, however, straightforward.read more »

Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises emerged out of the unraveling of the country’s neoliberal experiment circa 1997. With traditional union tactics proving incapable of addressing workers’ immediate needs, some workers took matters into their own hands by occupying and reopening their bankrupted or failing firms as workers’ cooperatives under the auspices of autogestión (self-management).

Worker self-management (WSM) has re-emerged as a major movement in Argentina, particularly this year with over 200 factories organized and controlled by their workers and a national co-coordinator of self-managed enterprises in the process of being organized. read more »